The First Crown

Letters That Linger

Lilliana

When Briallen returned with his next reply, I nearly dropped the basket. His seal was plain, but the sight of it made my heart leap.

I broke it open with shaking hands.

Lilliana,

If writing eases you, then write. I have no right to silence you.

If I am slow to answer, it is because I weigh every word twice before I set it down.

But know this I read every letter.

Reade

That night my candle burned low as I wrote.

Reade,

You cannot know what it means to me to hear that. I feared I was speaking into the void, that my words fell on cold stone. I write because I cannot help myself. You are in my thoughts from dawn until I sleep, and in my dreams even then.

I saw you yesterday by the training yard. You did not look at me, but I saw the sun in your hair and I thought how unfair it was that you should be so close and yet feel so far.

I am glad you read my letters. I am glad you know me, even in this small way.

Lilliana

His reply came three days later, longer this time, the script neat and measured.

Lilliana,

I did see you that day. I see you every day. Sometimes I force myself to turn away because I know if I let myself look too long, I will not be able to stop.

You should know that your words are not small things to me. They are my night prayers. I read them when the yard is quiet, when the moonlight catches on the page, and I trace the lines you have written until the ink smudges beneath my thumb. It feels as though I am touching your hand through the paper, as though your soft fingers have rested there and left warmth behind for me to find.

I wish to know everything about you, I know the way you carry yourself like a lady and still kneel in the mud for the sick. I know the sound of your laugh when you think no one hears it. I know how fiercely you love your sisters, how you argue with Briallen as though she is your equal. But I still yearn for more.

And I know the feel of your waist beneath my hand, though I should not. I think of it more than I wish I did.

Do not stop writing. I could not bear it if you did.

Reade

I read it until the ink smudged from my fingertips, my pulse a drumbeat under my skin. The next night, my own letter was twice as long.

Reade,

I think of it too. Of your hand on me that night, of the way you looked at me like I was something worth saving. I should not think of it so much, but I do.

Sometimes I press my own wrist and imagine it is your hand there, steadying me, warm against my skin. I imagine what it would feel like if no one was watching—if there were no keep walls, no rules, no duties—only the two of us and the space between us finally closing.

I imagine walking beside you openly. I imagine looking at you without fear that someone will see. I imagine speaking your name without whispering.

Do you ever imagine that?

I think of the yard where you drill, the clang of steel ringing like bells. I watch from the window and count the passes of your sword, telling myself if I reach a hundred without breathing your name, the ache will fade. It never does.

There are nights I wake and feel the whole keep pressing down on me, heavy as stone, until I cannot breathe. But then I think of you out there beneath the same moon, and somehow it eases.

I do not know what this feeling is meant to make of me, only that I am no longer the girl I was before the snow, before the gate, before your hand closed around mine. I think some part of me will belong to that moment always.

Lilliana

Lilliana,

I imagine it until my chest hurts. I imagine you somewhere no one can order you behind walls or speak your fate over you like a sentence. I imagine saying your name aloud with no one to hear it but you. I imagine touching you and not letting go.

But I do not dare imagine further, because if I did, I would not be able to stop.

I am trying Goddess help me, I am trying to be the man who keeps you whole. To be the guard they think I am, not the man who lies awake half the night burning with the thought of you.

But you should know this: when I wake from sleep, it is your face that comes to me first. When the cold bites and the hours drag long, it is the memory of you that keeps me standing. And when I tell myself I must let you go, I find I cannot.

Do not ask me to be silent.

Reade

I wrote to him of my dreams, of the way the moonlight painted my walls silver and I wished he were there to see it with me. I told him how my father’s dinners bored me to tears, how Evelyne’s laughter felt like needles, how Maren’s hair smelled of crushed grass when she hugged me.

He wrote back of the yard, of drills until his muscles burned, of Ronan’s gruff words, of Aedan’s jokes, of Thorne’s quiet menace.

And always, threaded between his lines, was something warmer, something that made my stomach flutter.

Lilliana,

When I think of you, I remember the way your braid brushed your shoulder that day on the path. I imagine undoing it, one tie at a time, until your hair fell loose and I could run my hands through it. I imagine how it would feel against my skin, softer than anything I deserve.

I should not write this. I should burn the page and pretend the thought never came. But it does come, night after night, and grows stronger each time I force it back.

If you knew how often I think of you of the way you looked at me, of the sound of your breath you would never write to me again. And still I cannot stop.

Reade

I pressed the letter to my lips before I hid it under my pillow, my breath catching as if someone might see me.

For a long while I just lay there in the dark, staring at the canopy, his words echoing over and over. My fingers tingled where they had touched the page, and I pressed them to my mouth as though I could hold the feeling there.

My whole body felt restless, alive in a way that frightened me. I curled on my side, pressing my thighs together until the ache eased just enough to breathe. It was as though something had been lit inside me and could not be put out again.

When the candles had burned low and Briallen’s breathing was soft beside the door, I got up and lit my desk lamp.

That night, my own letter was a confession.

Reade,

Your last letter has not left my mind. I read it again and again until I could recite the words in the dark. I thought if I pressed the page to my lips I might feel your hand on mine.

I am afraid to tell you what I feel, but tonight I cannot keep it in.

When I think of that night on the path, I remember the heat of your hand more than the cold of the snow. I imagine what it would be like if you did not let go. If your hand stayed at my waist until I could feel your heartbeat through your palm.

Sometimes, late at night, I press my hand where yours was and close my eyes. I do not know why it makes me shiver, only that it does.

I think of you when I cannot sleep. I think of what it would feel like to have you near me not in the hall, not at the gate, but here, where there are no witnesses. I do not know if I am wicked for wanting that.

If I am, then let me be wicked a little longer.

Lilliana